The Shadow of Everything Existing

by Ken Altabef

  “We’ll be better off here,” suggested another. “Hold up in the post. We can defend ourselves.”

  “Give ‘em what they want.”

  “Enough!” said the Captain. “Lieutenant Gekko is in command of this station.” He turned to Gekko. “What do you think?”

  The window at the rear of the room shattered under a barrage of small weapons fire. Gekko looked at Noona. He was much more interested in her safety than the fate of the Company’s trade goods. Actually, he would’ve liked to ask her advice. She probably knew these raiders and their tactics better than anyone. But he couldn’t ask her for help in front of the men. If he did so, he would lose all credibility immediately.

  “Our best chance is to run the devils off. They don’t get the post. I’m not going to let them. They tried this once before. If we just knock the wind out of a few of them they’ll retreat. I repelled the last attack with a lot less men than this.”

  That last statement was at least misleading, if not strictly true. He had frightened off an attack several weeks ago, but that had been just a few drunks and scoundrels, not the organized killing machine of the Yupikut. He had the idea these raiders would not relent quite so easily.

  He told Noona to crouch in the center of the room. He positioned the men at the various windows and instructed them at firing turns and how to stagger weapons reloading. “Don’t hold back. We have plenty of ammunition. Shoot to kill.”

  It was not much of a gun battle. Gekko fired a few shots from the window but the raiders had made effective barricades out of their sleds. One bullet grazed the window frame and nicked his shoulder but the wound was little more than an annoyance.

  Return fire from the raiders dwindled away to stony silence.

  “That’s the stuff!” said the Captain. “We’ve routed ‘em.”

  Gekko took advantage of the lull to speak with Noona. “You alright?”

  She ran her eyes around the common room. It was furnished with a few broad tables of rough-hewn wood, mismatched sets of rickety chairs and a bulky Primus stove squatting in the corner. Various surplus articles hung from the rafters including a few sleek one-man sleds, a number of bear and fox traps, and knitted blankets. “I don’t feel safe in here.”

  “That’s because we’re not,” replied Gekko. He kept his voice low. “But what do you think the Yupikut will do next?”

  Noona shook her head, no doubt about to answer that she had no good idea, when one of the men at the rear window called out, “Here. Here. There’s something going on out back.”

  Gekko and Noona squeezed in beside Captain Dicker to get a look.

  A whirlwind had formed in the open lot behind the trading post. Loose snow whirled gently round and round, and a man stepped forth out of the maelstrom.

  He was a tall man dressed in a long, flowing ceremonial robe of quilted doeskin with brown bear fur lacing the collar and running down along the front. His face was hidden by a strange mask of smooth brown wood which had the appearance of a man’s expressionless face, with small deep-set eyeholes under high arching brows. A slit mouth was framed by a painted mustache. A short pointed beard was painted below the mouth, and the shaman’s real beard, also pointed, spilled out below the margin of the mask. Attached around the face was a thin wooden hoop with a full set of bear teeth on the upper and lower rims which created the illusion that the shaman’s mask was emerging from the mouth of a gigantic brown bear.

  “It’s their shaman,” said Noona.

  “Obscuring himself with snow,” added Gekko. “It’s an old trick.”

  “But how does he do it?” asked Captain Dicker.

  “The shaman asks the spirit of the wind a small favor,” explained Noona, “to fly around him, carrying the loose drift.”

  Dicker snorted in disbelief.

  “Well, he’s not bulletproof,” said Gekko. “Take him out.”

  A pair of pistols fired, but to no effect. The men shook their heads, claiming it was too hard to see.

  “He’ll see this!” Gekko pumped a few bullets at the swirling snow.

  The shaman merely stepped back into the blur of white snow, unharmed.

  The rear wall of the trading post, which was constructed of sturdy half-logs of good English wood which had been shipped all the way from Old Blighty herself, began to shift and shake. The lumber all around them started creaking and groaning.

  “What’s that now?” asked Dicker. “What is that?”

  “Bloody black magic,” said Gekko.

  “Come on, man,” protested the Captain. “Steady.”

  Gekko glanced at Noona.

  “It’s the shaman,” she confirmed. “He’s talking to the wood.”

  “Talking to the wood!” exclaimed the Captain. He simply couldn’t believe it.

  Believe it or not, a thunderous crash rang out as the back wall of the common building ripped asunder. Most of the splintered wood flew outward into the street, but the icy cold and whipping snow lost no time in filling the gap. The trade items, yanked from their ceiling hooks, sailed out into the yard. The entire rear of the building lay exposed to the open air.

  “Fall back!” said Gekko, shouting over the whine of tortured iron bolts slowly peeling from their sockets as the remaining wood buckled and twisted. The group rushed back through the doorway into the large trading room. Gekko ordered the men to secure a couple of tables against the front door, and to place another crosswise in center of the room, creating a bulwark behind which they could crouch and shoot.

  “We won’t be safe in here,” whispered Gekko. “We have to make for the ship.”

  “Fine,” said Dicker. “I’ve more than enough men and arms on the Vengeance to deal with these bloody pirates and their witch-man as well. I’m surprised my men haven’t responded already. Surely they must have heard the shots and all this damn commotion.”

  “Sound is carried on the wind, on air,” said Noona.

  “Of course,” said Dicker.

  “Or not,” Gekko said in a low tone.

  “What the devil do you mean?” asked Dicker.

  “Apparently the shaman begs favors of the spirits of the wood and the air both.”

  “Gekko what are you babbling about now?”

  “Babbling? This place is coming down around our ears.”

  “It’s the wind as you say,” said Dicker. “Nothing else it could be.”

  “Wind or not, we have to get to the ship.” He raised his voice to the men. “Load up and get ready to run! It’s only a hundred yards to the dock. We’ll go straight out the front.”

  Gekko lead the charge out the front door, firing from both pistols simultaneously. The Captain and four sailors followed right behind, keeping Noona sheltered in their midst. The raiders were ready for them. The race to the dock was a barrage of rifle fire, charging dogs and sleds, and brown-furred ruffians. Most of the gunfire was ineffective in the mad dash, but Gekko eliminated two of the raiders with well-aimed shots before his pistols ran dry. The attackers had too much advantage at close quarters using harpoon-headed spears and bludgeons. Gekko even saw one of the sailors fall prey to an arrow shaft that buried itself in his back.

  Gekko and the Captain kept Noona between them. When they had closed most of the distance to the dock, Dicker called back, “We’ll make it!”

  Suddenly he stopped short and grunted in pain. His finger squeezed the trigger, discharging his pistol shot harmlessly up into the air. An Eskimo man stepped out from behind him. He had stabbed Captain Dicker in the back. As he stepped around the burly Captain he brought the knife up and sliced deftly across the Captain’s throat. Dicker gurgled blood as his stocky body was shoved forward, his arms struggling helplessly before him as if reaching for a tow line, blood streaming down his chest. He collided with Gekko who nearly went down under the man’s weight.

  “Aquppak!” blurted Noona.

  Aquppak. Gekko had heard of this man. The one who had killed the previous trade post manager Randy McPearson and had esca
ped the Mounties. Gekko’s fears were for Noona. Apparently the killer was known to her. Who knew what he might do next?

  Aquppak was surprised to see Noona at the post. He hadn’t set eyes on her since she was a little child. She had grown into a beautiful woman, resembling her mother Alaana only a little. His moment of disorientation gave way to a powerful attack by her husband. Gekko struck Aquppak full in the face, using the close fisted fighting style of the kabloonas, and powering his strike from the shoulder. Aquppak was knocked back, momentarily senseless.

  Only one of the mates survived the dash from the trading post, and it was this man who dragged Noona across the docking plank. Gekko saw her struggling, calling out for him.

  “I’m alright,” he said. “Go. Go!”

  More of the bloodthirsty raiders were moving in, their sleds kicking up snow. Gekko took another look at Dicker but his condition was helpless. He stood up, the Captain’s blood all over the front of his greatcoat. He looked for Aquppak but didn’t see him. There was too much commotion, too many hands reaching out for him. They meant to take him alive.

  Gekko was the last white man on the dock, cut off from everything but the sea by the advancing raiders. He heard Noona calling to him to get on board.

  Shots rang out from the deck of the Vengeance. One of the raiders took a hit to the shoulder, spinning away from Gekko. In a furious burst of energy Gekko knocked away the groping hands, kicked one of the men in the groin, and shoved his way past. He stumbled forward, charging across the docking plank like a mad bull.

  The sailors pulled the planks away with military precision, cutting off access to the boat from pirates and savages alike. The Yupikut had no way to bridge the gap of icy water and reach the ship. Unless they mobilized their kayaks.

  Kayaks, thought Gekko. I’d like to see them try to take Vengeance with a couple of kayaks.

  “The Captain?” asked one of the men.

  “Captain Dicker is dead,” said Gekko.

  “Dead?” The sailors burst into an uproar. The gist of it was they wanted to go back across and deal with the raiders. A few stray bullets pinged off the deck beside them.

  “Cast off,” said Gekko. “It’s no use. The Yupikut have taken the post. There’s no reason to go back. And believe me, I’d like to hunt each and every one of those dogs down as much as anyone. This is your Captain’s blood on my coat, right here. But we must think of King and Country first. Can your expedition stand to lose any more men?”

  Roger Evans, the ship’s first mate, shook his head and scowled. “Start up the engines!”

  CHAPTER 16

  THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED THE SNOW

  Alaana dipped the braided strand of caribou hair into the soot pot, coating it with black powder. She pierced the young girl’s chin with the needle, guiding the fine sliver of bone under the skin, tracking the black ash. The girl groaned softly as she wove the line. The matrimonial tattoos of the Anatatook people traveled down the chin in a wavy pattern like the jittery path of the snow hare. For now, Alaana made only the first two lines indicating that Talliituk had experienced her first monthly cycle and had come of age. Later, when she married, she would receive the other three.

  As the shaman withdrew the needle, the girl let out another small gasp, but her wince quickly dissolved into a grin of pride that matched the expression of her mother. Sitting by her side, Kala blotted the blood away with a calfskin pad.

  Alaana paused to admire the pair, both mother and daughter. Kala, now a woman of forty winters, still retained her youthful good looks, a perfectly round face, and a tiny, delicate nose. She had married Alaana’s childhood friend Mikisork, a man Alaana had always imagined she would marry one day. That was the life she would have had, she thought, if not for the calling to become shaman. Mikisork was too traditional to ever entertain the idea of becoming the shaman’s husband. He had married Kala instead. Alaana had once journeyed all the way to the Moon on the couple’s behalf to beg the Moon Maid to provide them a daughter. Talliituk had been the result.

  Alaana turned back to the task at hand, ushering the young girl into full maidenhood. Her eyes met the girl’s, and she nodded bravely for the shaman to continue.

  “Angatkok! Angatkok!” A pair of men came running up the slope, calling for their shaman. Their excited voices carried easily through the crisp air. “We’ve found something in the shore ice. Hurry, please!”

  “In the ice? What is it?” Alaana’s words misted slightly in front of her mouth then swirled away.

  The man shook his head, indicating he couldn’t speak openly of it, for fear of bringing trouble to the village. “Come, please.”

  Alaana stood. She smoothed the folds of her ceremonial parka, a coat of albino caribou skin hung with rows of polar bear teeth for strength and caribou ears for luck. She told the women she would soon return.

  She followed the men along the curve of the hillock. They said nothing during the short walk down to the water, retracing their path in the wet snow. The advent of summer had mostly broken up the sea ice, leaving only a few solid plates still bobbing along the shore, creaking ominously when their jagged edges rubbed against each other. Three men crouched on the frosted beach, their equipment flung carelessly along the bank. They had come to set their nets and see if they could get some crab, but had instead made a frightful discovery.

  “Look! There!”

  Alaana bent down to inspect a slab of ice the men had hauled out of the water. Just below the surface of the clear ice she saw a body. A man in the ice lay on his back, one arm tucked under, the other flung outward above his head. His face, preserved perfectly, was that of a man who had seen forty winters, his straight black hair shot with gray at the temples. A thin mustache played at the corners of his grimly set lips.

  “We think it’s Toonookyah.”

  “It is him,” Alaana said. “His body must have been driven here by the sea.”

  Toonookyah had been lost five winters ago off the side of the whaling boat. It looked as if the spirit of the sea had treated him with gentle hands — the current had not much damaged his clothes and his handsome face seemed at peace. Only the eyes, wide open, indicated any sense of alarm.

  The wife of Toonookyah came rushing to the scene. Alaana wished they hadn’t called her so quickly, before she’d had a chance to think what was best to do. The wife knelt beside the shaman in the snow at shore’s edge. She leaned forward, placing both hands flat on the wet surface of the ice. Her eyes bulged. A gasp passed her lips, and then quiet a sob, and then she broke out weeping in long, agonized wails.

  When her husband had drowned five years earlier, the woman’s grief had been enormous; she pulled out most of her hair, which to this day had grown back only in clumps and patches along the sides and rear. She had refused to take any other man to husband and lived alone with her children, depending on Toonookyah’s relatives for food and skins. Despite her age, several of the young men would have entertained an interest in her, for she was a renowned seamstress whose sealskin boots remained completely watertight either wet or frozen. But any potential suitors were dissuaded by her implacable attitude and the idea that, seeing as Toonookyah’s body had never been found, to force a liaison with the woman was to court an encounter with a vengeful ghost.

  Her chest-heaving sobs rang out through the frigid air, echoing back from the towering bergs along the coastline. Over the years she had pretended a certain calm resignation, but the sight of her husband’s body had shattered all dignity and grace. Years ago Alaana had nearly lost her own husband Ben under the most terrible of circumstances. She could only imagine the depths of the widow’s pain. She didn’t want this woman to revisit that grief again.

  The wife turned her eyes to Alaana and a light of faith crowded out the agony. “Please, you must help.”

  Alaana remained impassive, careful not to add false hope to the weight of the widow’s burdens. Saying nothing, she looked from the woman’s pleading eyes back to the frozen body.

&n
bsp; “Do something,” the wife begged. “He looks as if still alive.”

  “But he is not alive,” Alaana reminded her.

  “Do something.”

  “There are some things that no one can help. You know that.”

  The wife shook her head. The ragged strands of her unkempt hair wavered desperately. “Oh, but look at him,” she whined. “Look at him!”

  Perhaps, thought Alaana, there was something she might do.

  As the shaman, she knew the spirits in all things, every gust of air, every berg and stream and lake, from the smallest pebble on the beach to the ancient spirits of the ice mountains, from the tiniest plover chick just fallen out of the nest to the fattest bull walrus basking out on the ice. If her mind was right, she could look upon them directly and beg their favors.

  Alaana slowed her breathing. She rocked slowly backward, sitting cross-legged in the snow. It took but a moment to attain the peace of mind necessary for the spirit-vision. The world shifted color. Where there had been only white and more white along the shore, there now erupted vibrant hues of purple and gold.

  The spirit-vision illuminated the souls nesting within each of the men waiting on the shore as blazing fires of distinct pattern, a roiling mix of yellow, crimson and orange. Alaana regarded them in turn, struck as always by the beauty of each of their dauntless spirits. Their clothes held spirit-lights as well, dim remnants of the souls of the caribou or seal from which the hides had been taken. The energies of the stricken wife bore a different complexion, running from crimson to brown.

  Alaana turned her attention to the ice, looking deeply. All three of Toonookyah’s souls had already gone. The spark of life had been put out by the cold sea water. His name soul had been given over to a new baby in the village, his brother’s daughter, a few moons after his demise. That had been proper, so that the name soul did not become twisted and vengeful, and dangerous to the people. Toonookyah’s inua, or true spirit, was also gone, having made the journey to the distant lands across the divide between life and death. His body had been left an empty shell, frozen in time.